I’m sure you all know by now that my confidence isn’t exactly sky high so to keep on the subject and maybe explain myself a little bit I’ve decided to tell you a story.

When I was a teenager, and continuously, I had suffered from depression. Being in Highschool where you unfortunately hear about your friends sexual endeavors I started feeling extremely depressed, lacking in confidence and unwanted. After my Junior year there was a plan set by my Mom to move back to our old house in town.

Upon learning that I developed a mindset of jealousy and decided then when going to this new school and having no one to talk to I atleast wanted someone I knew I could turn to.

I proceeded to download MyYearbook, now known as MeetMe. At 17 I started talking to a 27 year old man that we’ll call “Tom.” Tom and I talked for the entire summer and he expressed interest in me that I wasn’t used to even though I knew I wasn’t entirely interested in him in that way. Being totally inexperienced in any kind of “romantic” relationship I instead came up with the worst motto in History.

I definetly won’t be with anyone else so I myswell take what I can get.

Absolutely terrible.

Anyways, after school started he and I started talking about meeting. We both knew that we were only about 10 minutes, walking distance, away from one another so I explained that it would have to be after school and I needed to be back before 5:00pm. He agreed.

A month or two into the school year we met for the first time and it immediately was off to an uncomfortable start. The very first thing he initiated was sex and being innocent in this subject and having the motto that I had, “no” really didn’t come easily. Including when it came to him coming to my house with no intentions on my part to do anything sexual.

For reasons that I really can’t validate even 6 years later, this “relationship” continued although red flags weren’t scarce. First red flag being that he was violent. I never left with any bruises but I can recall multiple times when I was unable to breathe and verbally and physically expressed that I was in pain.

Even then it continued until he requested one last thing, which I will not mention here because of disgust, to which I promptly and loudly denied.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why exactly he was attracted to me and didn’t figure it out until about a month later when I received a text from him claiming to be a friend of his, requesting pictures of any of my “pregnant friends.”

So yeah, I’ll be honest. I’m a bit overweight. Apparently that was close enough for him and his “fetish.” Red. Flag.

I, of course, told him no then attempted to message him the next day explaining the situation to which he played off in a joking manner saying, “Ya, he’s like that. Ha ha.”

Now I can’t say I was positive at that point that he was pretending to be other people until his “friend” texted a few more times requesting the same thing then receiving a message on Facebook from a girl I had never heard of saying that she saw us together and would call the cops.

That of course scared the shit out of me because at the time my Mom worked at the Court House and knew every cop in the area. Scared or not I decided to do some research. I looked at her page which had zero pictures of her, zero posts but she was friends with over 200 people including some of my friends, all of which either were pregnant or had kids.

I ignored the texts I got from “Tom” and messaged some of my friends asking if they knew who she was. They all said no and that they had just gotten a request from her and accepted it.

I decided at this point to message Tom and not only explain the situation but also to call him out for trying to fuck with me because not only were these 2 situations highly unlikely but the main thing I noticed was that Tom, his “friend” and this girl all typed EXACTLY the same. Right down to the punctuation and spelling of different words.

That was when I told him that I was done speaking to him and that he needed to erase my number and forget me NOW.

For atleast 2 months afterwards he continued to text me pretending to be other people, begging for forgiveness and even went as far as to write my phone number in a local stores mens bathroom.

I finally convinced my Mom to let me change my number, explaining that apparently someone from school had gotten my number and wrote it in the bathroom which was causing me to be harassed.

Unfortunately I had somewhat forgotten that he knew were I lived and I had faith that he wouldn’t go as far as to show up at my house.

As I’m sure you suspect, I was wrong to put faith in Tom because one night when my Mom picked me up from work she handed me an unsealed letter in an envelope that was just marked “To Emily.” Then explained that she found it laying on the front porch.

I ignored the letter and spent the entire drive home trying to talk about anything except for that.

Once we got there I called a friend of mine that lived down the block, whom I had shared this ordeal with earlier in the year, and asked her to come up and read the letter because I couldnt. Once she got to my house she read the letter and reassured me that if my Mom had read it there wasn’t anything incriminating in there. I gave it a once over and immediately was pissed because this guy refused to take no as an answer.

He had written his number on the bottom so my friend and I called him and explained that I was done, he was harassing me and that I was .5 seconds away from calling the police on him. We then hung up before he could respond and waited.

He never sent a text, letter or called me again and I didnt see him for about 3 years until he casually came into the gas station where I was working at the time. Which was the most terrifying moment I had experienced in quite awhile but fortunately that was the last time I saw him.

That was my story. If you ever fear that you are in an abusive, stalking or uncomfortable position like this, don’t be like me and handle it yourself. Talk to someone, call the police if you need to. People will help you.

Main photo from LitHubwhich includes a book review of Caroline Kepnes books which touch on “Love VS. Stalking.”

Have you ever been in a relationship where you were kept at arms length?

Close enough so they know you’re there but far enough that you’re just holding on by a thread.

Where going to visit is mostly going to end with you going home.

Where the closest thing you get to romantic was your first date and maybe a text or two.

Where everything else seems like a burden because you have to ask for it.

Where you sit here wondering when it’s going to end because you know it will eventually.

When you sit and wonder why you’re still doing it when you have a tattoo forever on your arm as a reminder of how enough you are.

Telling yourself that you’ve done this before and it wasn’t right then so why is it suddenly okay now.

Beating yourself up for letting it happen and getting played.

Made to think that you are important but only being given enough that only makes you somewhat question why the fuck you’re still sitting here.

What’s stopping you from leaving? You have your shoes on, you’re on your second ciggarette and your coat is on your lap but you’re still fucking sitting here. I wrote this blog about a week ago and at the time these were my thoughts. Since then I have built up the courage to share my concerns and figured everything out but I still wanted to post this as a reminder to myself since this has happened to me multiple times even though it doesn’t need to.

One day you will meet a girl.
To you this girl will seem as if she drifts through her day, floats almost.
You will watch her break down in front of everything that challenges the path she chose to take.

She will crumble into her hardships.
You will be dismayed.

One day you will meet the same girl.
To you this girl will seem as if she drifts through her day, floats almost.
You will watch her break down everything that challenges the path that she chose to take.

She will be resistant to struggle.
You will be enamored.

One day you will meet the girl again.
To you this girl will seem as if she drifts into your life, floats almost.
You will watch her breakdown everything that challenges the path you chose to take.

She will be abetting.
You will be indebted.

One day a girl will meet you.
To this girl you will seem as if you drift through your day, float almost.
She will watch you rise above everyone that crosses the path you chose to take.

She will be enabling.
You will be apathetic.

One day you will meet a girl.
One day this girl will drift out of your life, float almost.
She will leave you discarded on the path you chose to take.

I’m gonna share another bad habit that I have. That habit is using “pessimistic silver linings” to try and make myself feel better.

I actually thought of one earlier so I’ll use that as an example. My new job is about 40 minutes away from my house. The last job I had is half way between my Mom’s house and my Grandma’s house. I drive past it to get groceries, to visit with family and now to get to my new job.

My thought on this is, I tend to drag negative feelings out of locations that I have negative emotions/experiences from. Okay that parts common. The uncommon part of my thoughts are the ones that attach themselves to my future as well. Such as,

The good thing is, if I ever lose or leave my current job atleast I won’t have to see it everyday being that it’s so far out of the way.

That’s true and all BUT why the hell am I focusing on “if I lose this job.” Why is that important when I haven’t even officially started it yet.

Honestly, I tend to do this alot and it seems like my brain is kindof wired to think like that. Call it thinking ahead or preparing for the future but all I see is negativity and in the most childish way I can explain my feelings towards it…it really sucks.

Another example of this that comes to mind is,

Everything would be better if I were gone.

Not true. Not in the slightest. Do you see what I mean though?

It’s a negative thought attempting to camouflage itself with a few meaningless positive words.

I learned the value of colors and shades. I learned depth and how to truly recreate depth for your audience. I learned alot about other artists, but with all of that knowledge the main thing I learned was: Art should not be disturbed.

An artist should not have to fight over what line needs to be curved.

An artist should not have to explain why she made a choice to draw or paint something a certain way because you can’t always explain a feeling.

Art is like fate. You are predetermined to make it to a certain point and you will make the choices to reach that point along the way. You will make mistakes, you will want to quit.

But you wont.

I learned that no matter how much something gives you joy, that joy will always cease once it is disturbed.

You can paint a mural and let your mind escape into the wall, not worrying about edges, bumps and scratches.

Just emptying your mind onto a scarred canvas. Something that once was bare, begging to be filled with light.

You start sketching your design, slowly widdeling away your eraser. Taking every chance you can to look deeper, weeding out the perfection. Until finally, the mess that was once your mind is displayed on the once bare canvas and the feeling you have is undescribable.

To me, art shouldn’t be perfect. Art should break barriers. Disrupt the silence. Art should make the artist and viewers feel.

The viewers should feel every stroke from a paint brush, every dusting of charcoal. Every emotion that the artist layed out on that canvas should be felt without cease.

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is an anxiety disorder that causes a person to have a distorted view of how they look and to spend a lot of time worrying about their appearance. For example, they may be convinced that a barely visible scar is a major flaw that everyone is staring at, or that their nose looks abnormal.

This is a condition that affects about 1 in 50 people. The Prevalence of BDD is somewhat small, but is still a very devastating condition to live with. It can go one of two ways, either someone can perceive a small flaw as massive or their entire body as grotesque or unnatractive. Not only this but Body dismorphia can lead to social anxiety or simply just staying out of the public eye completely.

Now, I can go back to when I was in school and somewhat relate to this post. I was the girl in school that constantly wore hoodies or oversized t-shirts and jeans or sweat pants to cover up her body. Although back then I wasn’t as big as I felt I would still go every possible mile to disguise my body from everyone.

I’m sure that this is a common problem among teenagers in highschool especially considering the ridicule that they get. I know that I received alot of grief from family and other students even though at the time I was more than 50 lbs lighter. All I remember is that I felt the same about my body then as I do now.

Although I can not relate to this post as much as I would like to while offering help to anyone with this disorder I would like to say that every single one of the people I have met in my life has struggled with some kind of physical flaw. Most of the time these flaws were only seen by the person raising the complaints. Even though I completely understand that you’re the one that sees yourself everyday don’t forget that a stranger, regardless of admittance, can find beauty in almost everything.

Don’t ever be deterred by what you see because someone else might view you as a diamond among a sea of stones.

This post, while being written by someone who has very low self esteem, is not written by someone with diagnosed BDD.

I have a question and I don’t know if it could help your blog or not but it’s something that’s bugging the shit out of me.

What’s your advice about having no self worth? I think it’s a self worth thing atleast. I honestly spent the last year talking a really big game but everytime the conversation was with myself I would get extremely motivated (ie. Trying to write a book, jumping at any job and being spontaneous which really isn’t me.) Then I’d get into spots like I am tonight. The book seems like a lost cause, I have no motivation to finish it, everyday seems practically worthless to me. I truly thought I got over this when I texted the crisis number last week. I don’t know. My thoughts are honestly kindof jumbled tonight. The only thing that keeps coming to my head is death without dying

Then I stopped. I stopped because I did text the Crisis Line last week. I was alone and sobbing and I texted the number. I was given a shoulder and an open ear.

This has happened to me before too. Not with the Crisis Line but breaking down to close friends, family. Getting drunk with my ex and just letting everything flow out. I’ve heard and given other people every sliver of advice in existance, but…here I am.

Feeling overwelmed with life even when nothing is happening. Wanting to watch what happens but not feeling the will to be a part of it.